Content by tag "Greg Gisbert"

The University of Northern Colorado's Lab Band 1 has been a dominant force on the intercollegiate jazz scene for many years, first under director Gene Aitken and more recently Dana Landry whose latest enterprise with the band, The Romeo and Juliet Project, was of course inspired by William Shakespeare's incomparable paean to young love and its ...

“The Red Hook Jazz Festival exists contentedly on the margins, like its namesake neighborhood and much of the music on its
bill…The mood in the audience was neighborly, with a higher ratio of small children to youngish adults than I’ve seen at any
musical event not expressly pitched as a kids’ show.” —Nate Chinen, New York ...read more

Cedar Walton, whose long and illustrious career ended with his passing in August 2013, was not only one of his era's most celebrated jazz pianists but a musician whose impressive talents as a composer were often beclouded by his remarkable success as a performer. One of those whose admiration for Walton the composer is as earnest ...

Los Angeles songwriter and vocalist Steven Davis, finally reveals a non-holiday big band vocals album of his own with the swinging The Way You Look Tonight following in the tradition of great singers like Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, Jr. and others. This is traditional big band swing with a new voice interpreting the standards ...

Meet Michael Kocour: Michael Kocour is a jazz pianist, organist and composer. He also serves as Director of Jazz Studies in the School of Music at Arizona State University. Hailed by the Chicago Tribune as one of the most sophisticated pianists in jazz," Kocour has performed at venues around the world and has been ...

At the time Maria Schneider released Evanescence (Enja, 1994), big band jazz--especially in the US--was overly predictable and indecisively hanging on like ballroom music in a ghost town. Schneider, while embracing the best practices of earlier legendary big band leaders and her mentors, Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer, had added unconventional elements to her own compositions. ...

Composer and band leader Maria Schneider has only a single peer... Carla Bley. Both women are direct descendants of Duke Ellington and the spiritual children of Hector Berlioz. They are not masters of a single instrument, but of collections of instruments and their achievement is realized from directing those instruments in a given direction dictated by ...

There's a wealth of information to be found inside the beautiful packaging that accompanies this release, but a brief Theodore Roosevelt quote may be the most telling piece of text to be found there. It reads: There is nothing more practical in the end than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals ...

Suddenly, it seems, the state of Israel has become a focal point and incubator for contemporary jazz. A new wave of world-class musicians led by the three Cohens (not to be confused with Broadway's three Cohans) has crossed the ocean to plant the Israeli flag firmly in the midst of what was once considered an unassailable ...

At this time in my life, I'm finally able to express myself through jazz as I have always wanted by becoming fully immersed in the music and lyrics. I love performing American Jazz
Standards and surrounding myself with world class musicians

At this time in my life, I'm finally able to express myself through jazz as I have always wanted by becoming fully immersed in the music and lyrics. I love performing American Jazz
Standards and surrounding myself with world class musicians. There is no other feeling as fulfilling as performing jazz.